Isabella Skea, Lass o’ Pairts
November 2007
Isabella Skea: Such was her popularity that parents tried to enrol their boys in the girls’ department of
St Paul Street School in Aberdeen.
Isabella Low Chalmers was born at Laverock Braes, Bridge of Don, on 16 January 1845, the youngest of seven children of George Chalmers, a tenant farmer on the Grandholme estate, and his wife,
Elspet Low. Elspet died when Isabella was young, and her elder sister Margaret became the family housekeeper.
Isabella was taught at nearby Whitestripes School where, in the words of her obituary, “the master, with that perception which was the characteristic of the old parochial system, noticed the promise of his young pupil, and advised her to take up education as her future career.”
This teacher was probably William Robertson, who taught at Whitestripes until 1857, when he went to Forgue, although he
returned to nearby Old Machar two years later. William Robertson, a farmer’s son from Ellon, had studied for four years at Marischal College, Aberdeen, but had not graduated, possibly because he could not afford the fees.
At her teacher’s suggestion, Isabella went to the Free South School in Charlotte Street and from there became a pupil teacher at York Street School, under a Miss Anderson. Additionally, she attended classes at the Mechanics’ Institute.
She went to Edinburgh to study at the Church of Scotland Training College, around 1867, as there was no training college for teachers in Aberdeen at the time. Isabella was not the first farmer’s daughter to have to spread her wings. Another lass o’ pairts was Agnes Webster, a farmer’s daughter from Rothiemay, who studied in Edinburgh in the late 1840s / early 1850s, and was back teaching in Aberdeen by 1852.
Dr Currie, the head of the training college, was impressed by Isabella Chalmers, and recommended her for the post of Girls’ Head at the East Parish Sessional School in Aberdeen. When the East Parish School was taken over by the school board following the Education Act of 1872, the East Parish stipulated that “Miss Isabella Low Chalmers, teacher of the girls’ department, be continued in office, she having proved a highly successful teacher”. The school was renamed St Paul Street Public Elementary School.
Although Miss Chalmers could be a strict disciplinarian, she could also be indulgent as when, on 10 September 1875, she recorded in her logbook, “Today I managed to have 271 present although it was the day of the races, and in the afternoon as a reward to the children for coming to school instead of going to the races, we had a little treat which the children seemed to enjoy very much.”
Her popularity as a teacher can be gauged by that fact that in 1876, the school board had to prohibit parents from trying to enrol their sons in the girls’, rather than the boys’ department of St Paul Street School!
She subsequently became overall head of St Paul Street School, a position she held until her retirement in 1908. She excelled in every area of teaching. She particularly enjoyed training up pupil teachers, at which she was notably successful.
Isabella Chalmers became a member of the E.I.S. and was the fifth woman to become a Fellow of the institute. She built up a library at St Paul Street School, and advised the E.I.S. on matters relating to school libraries. This was a surprisingly hot topic – the council wanted school libraries to be off-shoots of the Public Library, with the budget controlled by them, whereas Miss Chalmers argued that schools should control their own libraries, with the budget controlled by the head teacher. Fans of Councillor Swick can well imagine the machinations behind this.
By 1878 she had saved enough to be able to buy a house at 17 Albert Place, Aberdeen, where she lived with a live-in domestic servant. By this time her lifestyle was in sharp contrast to that of her brothers and sisters.
Elspet had had a shotgun wedding to a James Lyon. The Lyons lived in a poor area off King Street where they brought up their family of six. Isabella’s eldest brother Alexander became a carter, and then a labourer and ultimately lived with his wife and six children in Jasmine Terrace. William became a farm labourer and left the area after being censured by the Kirk for fornication.
George, who took over the farm tenancy when their father died, also fathered an illegitimate daughter, but married the mother six years later. The final brother, John, died young. Only Margaret, who had married a farmer, enjoyed anything like her wee sister’s lifestyle. Despite the huge gap in lifestyles, Isabella was close to her nieces and nephews and five of her nieces followed her into the teaching profession; four of them lived with her at various times.
In the early 1880s Miss Chalmers was active in the campaign for university education for women. She believed that women’s wages should equal those paid to similarly qualified male graduate teachers. She argued that God would not have given women brains had He not expected them to use them.
On Christmas day 1884, Isabella Chalmers married William Skea, a journalist. (The marriage bar, by which women had to resign on marriage, was not introduced until after World War 1, to create vacancies for returning soldiers. Accordingly, there was nothing to stop her continuing her career.)
William Skea, who was two years younger than his bride, had been living at his family home, a tenement in Summer Street. His wife’s house, therefore, became the matrimonial home. William Skea was the son of a farrier from Charlotte Street, and, like his wife, had risen professionally by sheer hard graft.
The couple collaborated in the 1880s on a series of school textbooks, The Combined Class Series, written by Isabella and published by William. At that time, textbooks were paid for by parents, who liked to know they were getting value for money. As a result, newspapers carried reviews of textbooks, and The Combined Class Series was highly praised in the Glasgow Herald, the Scotsman and the Dundee Advertiser, as well as the local Aberdeen papers.
St Paul Street School was situated in one of Aberdeen’s poorest areas, off the Gallowgate (approximately where the Loch Street car park and the back door of John Lewis are today.) Mrs Skea saw the crippling effects of poverty first hand, and sought to help both through her work and through her involvement with Fresh Air Fortnight, a charity which sent slum children to enjoy a holiday in the healthy environment of farms around Aberdeen. Before sending them off, they were bathed (a new experience for some!) and given a fresh set of clothes.
Mrs Skea also helped out with Temperance Bazaars. Her husband, William, was a keen hill walker and member of the Cairngorm Club, who believed in the restorative powers of the contents of his hip-flask. He probably didn’t support his wife’s Temperance activities.
In 1896, as part of the celebration of Aberdeen University’s Quatercentenary, the E.I.S. held its annual conference in Aberdeen. Mrs Skea was on the organising committee and one of the conference speakers. She addressed the conference on The Status of Women in Teaching, declaring that “character would assert itself and no amount of ridicule or contemptuous deprecation would hinder or check the advancement of women, which would go on as surely as the march of civilisation itself”.
St Paul Street School was expanded piecemeal on several occasions until 1897, when the school board acquired a neighbouring property, allowing an ambitious rebuild. When the new school was opened, it could accommodate 1,000 pupils. Mrs Skea believed that at that time, no other woman in Scotland was head of such a large mixed-sex public elementary school. A few years later Torry school was extended and renamed Victoria Road School. It, too, could accommodate a thousand pupils and it too had a female head – Miss Elizabeth Nisbet.
In 1899, Isabella Skea addressed a meeting of women teachers in Edinburgh, stressing her pleasure in her work. “(Women) must realise that nothing in this world is got without a struggle.”
She herself had fought for the post she now held for 25 years, and was fighting still for its improvement. “If women only knew the stimulus of being free to carry out one’s ideals and plan one’s schemes without reference to any man; if they knew the pleasure involved in guiding a whole establishment, of putting each into the position best suited for their abilities, and of securing the happiness of a loyal band of workers, they would think the pleasure cheap at the expense of any amount of fighting.”
She added that women had to educate school boards, as well as the general public, to believe that women were the best-fitted by nature, training and experience to be the heads of large public schools.
She obviously convinced the H.M Inspector, who reported in 1902 that, “A remarkable feature of the school is the perfect discipline of the senior boys, which reaches a point of fineness unattainable by a master.”
Oh, if only we could have a few more like her today, able to impose ‘perfect discipline’ upon senior boys. Alas, her secret appears to have died with her.
Mrs Skea retired in 1908. Her retirement presentation was covered in full in the Aberdeen Daily Journal, where, among many compliments, the clerk to the school board, Thomas Hector, praised her “manly qualities” commenting that, “like a true champion of her sex, Mrs Skea had all along been fired with the desire to give proof to all concerned that there was nothing within the range of elementary schoolwork, which she, a woman, could not accomplish equally well with the best man among them. One might be tempted to think that in straining after such an ideal, Mrs Skea might just be a little disposed now and again to forget that after all she was not a man.”
Given Isabella’s ceaseless campaigning for women’s rights, and her belief in the superiority of women, Thomas Hector was wrong – she never forgot that she “was not a man”. It would be interesting to know what her husband thought, listening to his wife’s manly qualities being praised.
Others added their tributes. John Cruickshank of the Head Teachers Association, described her as a woman of “stimulating thermo-dynamics and enthusiasm, strong will, energetic declamation and unflinching frankness”. James Carle of the school board said that there was, “no doubt she had sometimes differed from her colleagues and from members of the school board with fearless outspokenness, but they did not think any the less of her for that”. The Education Department noted that, “she kept the relations between herself and her staff in a thoroughly healthy condition, while at the same time regularly criticising their work with unfailing justice and candour” .
So what was the secret of this feisty woman’s success? Probably it was not only her ability to assert herself with other adults but her genuine affection for her pupils. Thomas Hector said that she was, “tenderly solicitous of the welfare, moral as well as intellectual, of her pupils”. He added that with ingenuity and kindness she strove to ameliorate the hardships of the lot of those whose homes had been blighted by sickness, by poverty, and by some of those calamities, physical or moral, by which families are shipwrecked and young hearts chilled and saddened. She turned her knowledge of the home histories of her pupils to practical account in the way of affording sympathy and guidance and help at critical times and in a tactful way, doing work which never figured in inspector’s reports.
Isabella Skea died at home on 7 October 1914 and was survived by her husband.
Alison McCall is fascinated by Women’s History – the stuff you rarely read about in the history books. She lives in Kintore with her husband, two children and several pets.
This is an article from the November 2007 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.